Alex, Minarchist Minutema

As the title of the thread implies, I'm looking to find out how common or uncommon it is to get broadband Internet (through your cable TV company) service up North?

I'd imagine its no problem around the major towns...... but what about when you get up into the real boondocks, way up North (Colebrook and above)?

I want to live up in the boonies, but the one thing I cannot live without, is my Internet.

In another message thread, somebody else mentioned that, in general, you can't even get semi-necessary utility hook-ups (electricity or basic phone) in some of the more remote areas up north, nevermind frivoloties like Internet... I don't know if they were exaggerating the point though.

I'm in Coos County and I have 4mbps Time Warner cable and TW TV service (both were formerly adelphia) with HDTV included. They offer digital but we don't have digital just regular, but it still comes with 4 free HD channels, 1 movie channel.

The internet speeds I get are far BETTER than every single residential cable/DSL connection I've EVER used in a more populated area, I think because so few people use them up here. I get 600KBps (not kilobits bytes, and yes I know that's above 4mbps but I am not joking) on torrents regularly... so you know, I'm only showing all this off to make my point - there is no lack of media access up here. If you don't like Time Warner, there are a few local companies, we could use Bretton Woods for phone/DSL, but not cable, but of course then there's satellite TV.

Further north, I know Lancaster has cable, and further north to Colebrook at least has Verizon DSL. Lancaster also has the DSL... Berlin has cable probably DSL as well, as does Gorham. Littleton and Bethlehem are also on TW Cable. We're covered... so next time you hear politicians talking about "wiring the north country" or "bringing the internet to the north country" ... they've probably made some stupid assumptions because we definitely have it and it works just great.

I live just outside Berlin, in Milan, and there is NOTHING available here except satellite. I can't even get that, since there is a mountain near my house that blocks the signal. We have Time Warner cable, but its not the same as the Berlin Time Warner; Roadrunner isn't available here. Then again, we also get half the channels for the same price. I'm considering going in with one of my neighbors that has a good location for a dish, and get Wild Blue, and hook up a wifi connection.

Errol has high speed (don't know what type), Colebrook also has it in the center of town. Once you get out of the center of town, you are very limited. Milan and Dummer have nothing but satellite available. I don't know about the other towns up here.

When Fairpoint bought the Northern New England system from Verizon one of the promises they made to the States in order to get approval was to expand broadband internet services for their customers. Have you checked how many now have that service? I am guessing it is just about zero.